Category: Taxes

“Democrats took a serious one-two punch last week. First, they suffered their second consecutive mid-term “wave” election on Tuesday, losing the Senate in the process. Then on Friday, the Supreme Court announced it would review yet another Obamacare case that Obamacare champion Ron Pollack of Families USA said represented “the most serious existential threat” of the moment to the president’s signature piece of domestic policy legislation.
Consequently, conservative health reformers now have a platinum opportunity [1] to drastically overhaul or perhaps even replace the most misguided law enacted in recent memory. But taking advantage of this historic opportunity will require an exquisite balancing of speed and shrewdness.”

“Democrats are desperately distancing themselves from Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber. He “never worked on our staff,” President Obama said this weekend in Brisbane, Australia, (even though Gruber was paid almost $400,000 by his administration, is the intellectual author of the individual mandate and met in the Oval Office with Obama and the head of the Congressional Budget Office to pore over the bill). “I don’t know who he is,” Nancy Pelosi declared on Capitol Hill (even though she repeatedly cited him by name during the Obamacare debate).
The reason Democrats are running from Gruber is the same reason conservatives should be thanking him: Gruber has exposed what liberals really think of the American people.”

“Imagine what would have happened in the midterm elections if the Jonathan Gruber videos had emerged a week before November 4th than the week after. Actually, we don’t have to imagine it, at least not entirely. There is one more Senate race still left to settle, and it looks like Gruber will play a big part in the finale for Mary Landrieu in Louisiana:
I included this in last night’s QOTD, but it’s worth its own look here. The attack strategy in the last two cycles of “Senator X was the deciding vote on ObamaCare” had a mixed track record. The exposure of Gruber’s remarks makes the attack work better than it did in the past, though. It makes each Democrat complicit in the lies and deceptions of ObamaCare which may resonate better than opposition to the law itself. The sheer arrogance of Gruber’s remarks will rub most voters raw.”

“Do President Obama’s adamant denials that he misled the American public on various important aspects of Obamacare stand up to scrutiny? No, and it’s not even a close call.
In the past several weeks, there’s been a major uproar in the alternative media — the liberal media doing their usual best to cover up stories damaging to this administration and the cause of progressivism — over recordings that have surfaced of MIT economist Jonathan Gruber. Gruber essentially admitted that the administration duped the American people, whom he called “stupid,” on certain issues and the Congressional Budget Office as to the cost of the legislation.”

“Speaker of the House John Boehner has hired Jonathan Turley, a renowned liberal law professor, as his lead counsel in the House’s lawsuit against the Obama administration’s delay of Obamacare’s employer mandate.
Turley is a law professor at the George Washington University, frequent legal commentator and self-avowed liberal. He may be the perfect pick for House Republicans — Turley is not only a liberal, but is friendly toward Obamacare itself, according to his writings. But he’s vociferously pushed back against President Obama’s generous use of executive action in the past and has hit the administration for its implementation of the health-care law and he said he jumped at the chance to represent House Republicans.”

“Jonathan Gruber, the Obamacare architect made notorious in newly surfaced videos, credits the “stupidity of the American voter” with helping pass the Affordable Care Act. To help Americans understand the law, it turns out, Gruber wrote — and starred in — a 150-page comic book titled “Health Care Reform: What It Is, Why It’s Necessary, How It Works.”
Throughout 12 chapters — with titles such as “Through the Past, Darkly,” “Selling Fear Instead of Facts” and “Good Things on the Horizon” — Gruber, one of the characters, chronicles the journeys of four Americans as they navigate the health insurance market under Obamacare.”

“The White House looked to distance itself Thursday from critical remarks made by one of the architects of President Barack Obama’s health care law, who suggested the law benefited from a lack of transparency and the ignorance of the American voter.
In videos that have surfaced, MIT economist Jonathan Gruber has been quoted as saying the “lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” in seeing the complicated law passed. “Call it the stupidity of the American voter, or whatever,” he said in the video from a conference in 2013. “But basically, that was really, really critical to get the thing to pass. I wish we could make it all transparent. But I’d rather have this law than not.””

“By now you’re aware of the red hot ‘federal subsidies’ controversy, yes? The star of the show at the moment is one Jonathan Gruber — a famed economist and top Obamacare architect — who’s been caught repeatedly lying about the law he helped design, while smirking about the “stupidity” of the American people. Gruber’s performance has become so harmful to The Cause that Nancy Pelosi is now pretending she doesn’t know who he is:”

“The Supreme Court has granted cert. in King v. Burwell, one of four cases challenging the IRS’s ongoing expansion of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s main taxing and spending provisions beyond the clear and unambiguous limits imposed by Congress. Here I will attempt to dispel common myths surrounding these “Obamacare” cases.”

“Liberals are in retreat this week as they recover not only from the historic defeat suffered by Democrats in last week’s midterms but also from the fallout from Jonathan Gruber’s confessions about the deceit at the heart of the effort to pass ObamaCare. The three videos that have surfaced in which Gruber strips away the veil of lies from the campaign to pass the misnamed Affordable Care Act is a major embarrassment for the administration. But while many on the right are treating this as a smoking gun that should doom President Obama’s health-care legislation to repeal, liberals are confident that this storm will pass and that the law will survive. But while they are right that nothing—not even a similar admission from the president himself—could wipe it away, they are wrong to think Gruber’s statements haven’t significantly altered the debate and may yet play a crucial role in its destruction.”